American Vampire: Lord of Nightmares #4

Dustin Nguyen's cover for this fourth chapter of Scott Snyder's five-part Vertigo miniseries is a striking study in restrained color — a snow-swept winter landscape rendered almost entirely in stark black and white, broken only by vivid splashes of red. A hooded figure in a white fur coat cradles a wounded, bloodied man on the frozen ground, while in the background a crashed train and a swarm of dark, scrambling figures suggest chaos on a massive scale. It's a quietly devastating image that balances intimate grief against an apocalyptic backdrop, making this 2012 issue hard to pass up.